


we are a woven thread (find the strand)

by betony



Category: Ancient Greek Religion & Lore, The Aeneid - Virgil
Genre: F/M, Mutual Pining, Not A Fix-It, Reunions
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-13
Updated: 2021-02-13
Packaged: 2021-03-12 19:15:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29389692
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/betony/pseuds/betony
Summary: The Sibyl Aeneas finds at the underworld’s edge is not entirely a stranger.
Relationships: Aeneas/Cassandra (Ancient Greek Religion & Lore)
Comments: 8
Kudos: 25
Collections: Chocolate Box - Round 6





	we are a woven thread (find the strand)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ViaLethe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ViaLethe/gifts).



> For ViaLethe, creator of classic ships and constant source of inspiration. Thank you for your wonderful prompts!

On the beaches of Cumae, duty-bound Aeneas falters.

He does not care for the surprised eyes of his men, or for the very high likelihood of dropping the golden branch he had so dearly won from the woods. He does not care for anything but gaping at the woman before him, who seemed just hours before a stranger, but now, inexplicably—

“My friend,” says Cassandra with feeling, “you are being ridiculous.”

He is. He knows this. But long-dead princesses are not in the habit of turning up, features utterly changed, on foreign shores. Unless the rumors are wrong: lies, perhaps, spread by the wretched Achaeans to conceal an escape and to break the spirits of those Trojans remaining….

“Nothing of the sort,” she tells him, able as ever to guess his thoughts. “It’s only that the Sibyl is a most accommodating girl—“ her face darkens “—and not unfamiliar with the heartache our divine master inflicts upon his own. Besides, who better to lead you through the Underworld than one who already lives there?”

A wonder. For once her words do not scatter senselessly across his skull—or perhaps it is only that he has grown a little mad himself. So much the better, then; reason has hardly served him well.

“Overrated,” says Cassandra, “along with its Lord. Now—before it grows too late—will you come?”

 _Anywhere_ , he thinks, and follows her.

* * *

Only when they are well past the dreary banks of the dread Styx does he dare speak. 

The woman beside him is not entirely unchanged; her hair is straight and reddish rather than Cassandra’s glorious dark aureole. Her eyes are heavy-lidded, her features long—and yet, the smiles, the spark that animate her as just as he recalls. 

The exasperation, as well. She catches him watching her sidelong yet again, and shakes her head: a mannerism in which the stately Sibyl he had encountered before might never have indulged. He is reminded, suddenly, of strolling the marketplace of Troy and watching Cassandra hold a gorgon-shaped mask to her face. The expression might have been terrifying, but the words that echoed within Cassandra’s own, and he had laughed even as he bade her put it down. 

(“Is that not the occupation of heroes?” he’d teased. “To rid princesses of the company of monsters?”

Her answering smile had been bitter. “There’s a hero present, true, and a princess, too; but the mask is gone, and still the monster remains.”

He hadn’t seen what she meant then. He thinks he might now.)

“Is that how it is?” he asks. “Are you exchanging her body for your own?”

“Borrowing,” she replies, and pointedly fails to notice how his face falls. “You see, the spirits in Hades are not always confined to these gloomy shores; occasionally, one of us is allowed a —a holiday above, given we can locate an obliging mortal to slumber while we do.”

“And _she_ was one such?”

Cassandra nods. “And will suffer for it, I fear, once it reaches Lord Apollo’s attention. She bargained a long life for her services; he will see to it that it is long beyond all endurance. But it was nothing she did not expect before he demanded her love, and nothing she did not foresee before her dreams reached me. All that’s left is to pay the price Phoebus demands.”

Aeneas recoils from sheer habit. To hear such accusations of the shining god! But here, now, the words shine with truth, as they never have before; it is as though a blindfold has been lifted from his eyes, and he is squinting into his first good look at the sun. If this much was true, what else of what she had claimed, all those years ago, might have been—

He finds her watching him. “You needn’t apologize,” she says, with the composure of the dead. “You were hardly the only one.”

“All the more reason why I should,” he returns. “Being one of many to do you an injustice makes it no less grave.” He stoops into a half-forgotten bow. “I beg your forgiveness, my lady Cassandra.”

Her voice, genuinely surprised for once, is utterly unfamiliar. “But you’ve always had it, my friend, for all those sins you believe yourself to carry.”

A better balm, Aeneas thinks, than he deserves. 

* * *

The worst is not Dido’s snub, coupled with Cassandra’s too-knowing eyes upon his back; nor is it his reunion with his father, all solemn advice punctuated by suspicious looks. Anchises’s eyes might see only the Cumean Sibyl, but his spirit has always misliked the mad princess of Troy.

The worst is: standing just beyond the gaping mouth of Avernus, a stone’s throw from the world of the living, Cassandra reminds him that having guided him safely back, her work is done. Her voice is as bright and brittle as ever, and he wonders how he might ever have missed the unhappiness underneath.

He takes her hands. They are foreign in his own, but with time, he might learn them anew. “Come with me,” he blurts out before he can think better of it. 

“The Sibyl—this body—“

“You said yourself she had nothing to hope for,” says Aeneas, warming to this reckless scheme, “only life eternal and unpleasant. But we have more; think, think, how the men of Troy would rejoice to have their princess leading them! The world might know that while our walls might fall to Achaean hands, Priam’s line persists.”

But she is smiling so sweetly that he already knows what she will say.

“We all earn our rewards,” she says, “and learn when not to seek them anymore. I’ve had enough of life among grand stories, my friend; I’ve found the shades treat me far more kindly.”

No argument comes to mind, only the vague conviction that it would not be so bad a fate if he were to linger here in the Land of the Dead beside her.

“But you are being ridiculous as ever,” she tells him. “Didn’t you hear your own fine words? What’s left of our people must endure, and I know no more capable hands than yours.” Her long white fingers against his cheek are so cool, so comforting. “You will see them safe. This much I promise you.”

He believes her. It is an uncanny, unaccustomed confidence he finds growing within himself, and yet he bends to kiss her, if only this once. 

But the woman beside him stiffens, and he is certain, without needing to look, that the Sibyl is once again in possession of her own body. Mercifully she then reaches to straighten a fold of her robes, allowing him a moment’s privacy to collect himself, before indicating the cave’s mouth. Can he explain away his reluctance to move as weariness? Hopefully so.

“I trust,” says the Sibyl as they begin to walk, “you were successful.”

“As much as I can hope to be,” Aeneas says wryly, and her expression in return—eyebrows raised, brow furrowed in confusion—is no different than his reactions to Cassandra’s words so long before.

So it always was with the wise and the weary, he reminds himself, and, not needing to be told again, treads once more towards the waiting light. 

**Author's Note:**

> Title from Vienna Teng’s “The Breaking Light.”  
> For those curious, the Cumean Sibyl was in fact cursed to eternal (or at least extraordinarily long-lived, to the point she ended her days as a shriveled husk) for reasons that are...unclear. (The usual explanation I’ve seen is the same offering her love/rejecting Apollo found in Cassandra’s story, which seems suspect.) Offending the god by helping out a fellow prophet seems as good a reason as any other.
> 
> Aeneas’ descent to the underworld is always interesting to me, not only because technically, Odysseus is probably doing the same thing around the same time (with very different descriptions of what they find) but also because Aeneas returns with so much more resolve. I really wanted to graft this in with a final bittersweet meeting and a chance for my tragic darling Cassandra to be properly understood for once. 
> 
> I very much hope you enjoy this, and thank you again!


End file.
